ARTIST STATEMENT

by Kethevane CellardApril 2018

My work questions the representation of space and the figure. It is born from a need to reinvest and reenchant the material world. Using a traditional approach, I address issues like the generation of mental images, time, the sense of belonging, and reconciliation.

My shapes are derived from everyday objects, tools or simplified figures. They incorporate symbolism while retaining a realistic appearance. They are resonant with archaic images, whose meaning has been lost but which remain powerfully evocative and carry the quiet subterranean energy of abstraction. By using a timeless vocabulary, I hope to evoke spiritual and vital answers to contemporary questions.

At first glance, current times may seem absent from my work but they are its underlying canvas. Facing the strangeness of today’s complexity, I fall back on our cultural heritage, only to realize that our memories are constantly reinterpreted and rearranged by our brain and the passage of time; that our knowledge of events is incomplete. If our main cultural narratives are defined as much by randomness as by the subjectivity of those who lived to tell them, and we thrive on wealth of dubious origin, what bedrock values can one draw from?

The loss of certainty, although unsettling, creates the conditions for renewal. This is the attempt in my work: the finished piece is the unforeseen result where the remaining constituent parts come together, and where, as per the modus operandi of sculpture, intellectual matter is removed rather than added. Far from being nostalgic, I am surrendering to the hope that a new-found vitality will emerge from this process.

I have three ongoing series at the moment. In the first one, materiality is what grounds my Impossible Figures. They draw the connection between physicality and the torments of their inner spaces, which run on a different time scale. They are shaped by the displacement of internal elements that have disappeared or which have become unrecognizable; the otherness inside. In my Topology series, I explore the distortions, pulls and folds caused by time and memory on the composition of mental scenes. The Belonging series allows me to investigate my relationship with nature and architectural structures, and the way they come to mind and are rearranged.

IMPULSE I

by Yaelle Sibony MalpertuSeptember 2017

Kethevane Cellard plays with textures and invites us to cross thresholds and initiate encounters. The forms are clearly defined, but not definitive: who’s to know if they’re not pregnant with another form, or evolving into another material? She is unlike artists who display what they have seen; her creative impulse is more complex. It runs through the written word, interacts with texts, and metabolizes in her drawings and sculptures. She draws inspiration from poetry and science, creates mysteries, one-off solutions, improbable equilibria, and the innermost challenges of children and of those who keep watch.

The path betrays a deeply felt and accepted isolation. This solitude is a starting point for an attempt to reach out. Meanwhile, the definitive shape overcomes this solitude through symbolism, linking the heterogeneous, the different, and initiating the dialogue. Kethevane Cellard has a confident, mature penstroke; it produces shapes, entities with a tangible presence, whatever their size and relationships to one another. She queries the edges by using shapes to resonate with them, to observe the outcome of their immersion in a wide-open space. With no background, no perspective that might create volume, it’s up to the shapes themselves to belong and create common ground. They often defy gravity. They are lucid but not despairing: they herald changes to come.

Those Left Behind overflow with the energy that propels them forward! Where are they headed, imbued with the vitality of the uprooted? These happy few rediscover domains previously thought to be well-known. Towards which horizons do their sails swell (in Untitled with Sails), lifting boulders in their endeavour? Or are the rocks supporting them in a multi-dimensional tension? What would Escher have thought of this concurrent superposition of multiple angles? The Discussion has the structure of a chamber orchestra. Each member plays a melody to embody a shape and bring them together for the duration of the symphony. The energy deployed by each one — to come alive, to express themselves and to communicate – is palpable. We can also hear the awkward moments, the cacophony, the missed interactions, the opportunities for agreement and harmony. Three women move in unity, each one isolated but staring at one another, subject or object—depending. Their proximity shows the entanglement of their situations, in which they grow through subtle, perilous but substantial confrontations.

All those shapes point to existence as a simultaneous ongoing phenomenon as well as a determinate expression of randomness. They also spark daydreams, leading us into a familiar yet alien intimacy: they reveal remote areas of the mind, our other reality.

The very occasional use of color, to underline the movement of a shape or its gravity, and so we realize that Kethevane Cellard’s drawings are mostly devoid of color. It is the forms themselves that provide color.